Marketing mistakes to avoid during the holidays

December 14, 2018

2018

Holiday Marketing

It’s the holiday season, which also means it’s the season for retail and e-commerce. It’s the time of year when you can really reel in some profits for your business. According to Adobe Analytics, the total online U.S. retail sales for the last two months of 2017 amounted to more than $108 billion. If you’re not leveraging for the season, then your business won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities the holidays provide. Avoid these marketing mistakes so your business has a lot to celebrate this holiday season:

Being unprepared for an influx of orders

Plan for the holiday season by having enough hands on deck and enough products in stock so that you’re not overwhelmed when the orders start coming in. If you need them, hire seasonal workers. It’s a good idea to have excess inventory and extra packing materials just in case. This way you can avoid disappointing customers.

Don’t forget to check in with your website host to ensure your site can handle the additional traffic. You definitely don’t want to lose sales because of a crashing website.

Lack of adequate online support for customers

If a potential customer has a question about your product, it should be easy for them to find the answer. That’s why it’s super important to set up online support for customers, this should include a live chat function on your website and a support line through either email or phone. This will avoid pushing away potential customers by getting their urgent questions answered immediately. Make sure your team is well acquainted with the support functions in place. Set up automated messages and motivate your team to respond quickly to questions.

Lack of paid advertising

By investing in paid advertising, you will be able to reach new customers as well as re-engage existing customers. It’s very simple to do – create a custom audience based on your existing Facebook following. This will allow you to run ads to customers who are already receptive to or supporters of your brand.

Using paid advertising is also an opportunity to target previous visitors to your website and target ads to them based on their browsing or what items they added to their cart. Remarketing ads can be a great tool to give customers that extra push to make a purchase.

Not having an effective e-mail marketing strategy

If you want to maximize holiday sales, then you need an effective e-mail marketing strategy. A 2017 Shopify reports that e-mail was most successful in converting shoppers into customers, in front of social, direct mail and search.

An effective holiday e-mail marketing campaign is specific to the particular holiday and is planned ahead. To get the most out of your campaign, start your promotions early, use holiday e-mail templates and offer exclusive holiday deals.

Bad checkout experience for customers

Holiday shopping is usually hectic and stressful. The best way to make sure customers buy your product is to be the least stressful part of their shopping experience. The last thing you want is to be an additional source of stress for your customers. That means the checkout process for customers should be smooth and easy.